Step 1: Material:

Felt

Fabric for the main body of the cell -I used flannel

Toy stuffing

Yarn

Thread

Embroidery thread

Scissors

Pins and needles

Template for organelles (see celltemplate.pdf below)

A note about sewing
You can use a sewing machine to attach the larger organelles, but the smaller ones may need to be hand stitched. I mostly used hemming stitches and in some cases running stitches along the edge of the felt. Click here for examples of these stitches

Step 2: Cell body

Cut out two equal size pieces of fabric for the main body of the cell (one piece is to be a cross-section of the internal portion of the cell, the other will be the outer cell surface), they can be circular, oval, squarish or irregular shaped depending on the type of cell that you want to make. Just make sure that they are large enough to fit all of the organelles leaving room for the seam.

Step 3: Nucleus, Nucleoli and Chromatin

Nucleus:The nucleus is a membrane bound organelle that holds the cells DNA.NucleolusThe nucleolus is the site of ribosomal RNA synthesis.ChromatinChromatin consists of DNA and its associated proteins.

Cutting

Cut out a large circle of felt, this will be the largest component of the cell; the nucleus.

Cut out a circle of felt in a different colour with roughly 1/4 the diameter of the nucleus, this will be the nucleolus.

Cut out several little 'X' and 'V' shaped felt pieces of a third colour. These are the chromosomes(chromatin).

Sewing

First sew the nucleoli to the nucleus.

Then sew the chromosomes onto the nucleus.

Then sew the whole thing to the the cell (that blue piece of fabric from step 2).

okay, saved one of the pics from fb to my desktop, hopefully this will be small enough in file size and dimensions to post here. This is a straight on view with the whole nucleus. We split it in half so it can be opened to show the internal parts as well. It also has a long flagella off the back end.

I love this instructable. I did some slight modifications for my son's project using your organelle patterns but enlarged a plushie mochi pattern to make the body. The teacher has asked if she can keep it :-) I have pictures posted on FB if anyone is interested, the files are a bit large for on here. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.320802471275497.75250.100000372403357&type=1 My big mistake was not being able to find one of those carwashing mitts. We tried hand tying and knotting mercantized cotton for cillia.....NEVER try this.

This is the Ribisome that recenlty won the 2009 nobel prize for biology for researched Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England; Thomas A. Steitz of Yale University; and Ada E. Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.Now you can sew one!!

All the parts of a cell do very interesting jobs on a microscopic level.

That's really cool, they "demonstrated what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at an atomic level using a visualisation method called X-ray crystallography to map the position of each of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome".

About This Instructable

Bio:I like sewing and crafts,and trying new things. I'm vegetarian and always looking for new recipes. My cat's name is Mirko and likes to be in the centre of things, so you will see him in several of m...read more »